


Remorseful.

by BubblegumCannibal



Series: With Honor and Magic [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 16:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BubblegumCannibal/pseuds/BubblegumCannibal
Summary: Two Templars have a rather short conversation down in a jail cell.





	Remorseful.

**Author's Note:**

> so i went through my tumblr and found this in one of the asks and i never posted it.

Silence always ran his blood colder than his cell as night fell. This was the discomfort he was given, awaiting a fate worse than death—or so he had hoped. Or well, it was a wish of a dying man. Corypheus had ruined him, tainted him further than the Templars had done themselves. Though free, almost absolved of the sin he had accumulated in his heart, this wasn’t how he saw repentance.

The Red Templar General was hoping to be swinging by the gallows and thrown into a pauper’s grave by now. He had fallen so far from grace that his own mind left him desperate. The Templars wouldn’t help him, they wouldn’t even bat a lash in his direction when he sat begging on the streets. Yet here he sat, hands folded in his lap, staring at the earth that reclaimed old stone, void of any true thought that wasn’t negative.

That and the chill that coursed through him… With all that’s happened, feeling the red lyrium degrade from his body felt worse than the nauseating withdrawls. It felt like it was pulsating, draining what was left of him to the point where he barely noticed his leg bouncing away. His body was hungry… but not for any proper sustenance that it rightfully lacked.

The Inquisition was planning to move him in the morning. He was to be examined and probed like a damn monster, but even then he couldn’t denounce that. Samson had become the beast he feared the Templars would create—teeming and swilling with lyrium flowing throughout his veins, lyrium crystals scarring his skin in shimmering red blemishes, skin pale— _grey,_ more so, and craving for the next time he’d taste such bittersweet liquid at his tongue.

But even then…

Wood creaks as the main door opens, flooding in the gentle light of the torches that lit the stairwell. Sluggish did the guard hop to her feet; hand to her chest with a half-assed greeting to whomever had stepped in. Even then, she had disappeared into darkness just to be replaced with the solemn face of a familiar.

Even in the shadows did Cullen’s gold gaze glow with heavy disappointment.

“There have been a change of plans,” he began. He sounds so drained—almost breathy in his words. It’s almost at a point to make him miss the older days. “You will be conscripted instead. Placed at my side, but still examined by Dagna. I–”

He hunched forward on the stool he sat upon, head buried in scarred hands.  Glancing up, Samson looked away, never wanting to meet that stern gaze that seemed to terrify enemies. But he knew better. Samson had seen _Cullen._ Not _Knight-Commander_ nor _Knight-Captain_ Cullen Rutherford. Not the _Commander of the Inquisition_ … but **_Cullen_** … that curly haired fool that lingered as a simple fresh face with a whole mess of demons in his soul.

“What? Am I too disgusting to look at now? Is that what shut you up?” The lyrium destroys a man, doesn’t it? He was so healthy when they were younger… then again, Samson had been more discreet then. His addiction festered, but he wasn’t like _this_ …

Cullen looked up from his hands and stood with a rough noise, the metal stool scraping against stone before it toppled over. “Do you know how hard it was to save you from swinging? Everyone up there wants to either watch you burn at the stake or watch your eyes pop at the noose.”

“Ya could’ve let it happen. You already killed Maddox…” With a shiver, Samson leans back against the damp stone wall, his voice falling to a barely audible whisper, “What do I have to live for?”

There’s a long sigh from the Commander. In silence, he lifts the stool from the floor and sits it back in front of the cell. Dare he enter and face the wrath of the ex-Templar or does he sit away at the safe distance… providing the man doesn’t yank him from his seat through the bars. A pause. Then a soft jingle of keys rattling and now he’s dragging the stool in front of Raleigh. “Maddox died for you. There was nothing we could do to stop him. He was already vomiting blood by time we got to him. That’s not _my_ fault.”

Raleigh Samson, a man of “honor” at one point of his life. One who threw everything away to save as many mages as he could before his addiction devoured him… Unlike Cullen. One bad run-in and now all of them are monsters… even that man—the so called “Hero”—he claimed to have loved once upon a time ago. He would have dragged Maddox with him. Kept him alive. Ensured his safety… however there was nothing he could do. It was either be captured at his side or leave him to Calpurnia—and both was a horrible idea.

But his question still lies: _what **did** he have left?_ He burned it all away in a misty haze of heavy lyrium highs that left him floating for ages. Life back at the Chantry was long gone. Memories were so painfully broken that even faces remained blank to him. Were they friends? Enemies? Lovers? He stared blankly at Cullen.

…He was a lover… wasn’t he?

“I think about the day you were casted out more than I should.” Cullen started, “I could have prevented that. Helped you like you helped me… and like a coward I listened to you calling out for us and I didn’t stand up for you. Today… Today I did.”

“And yet I’m still in a cage.”

“Only if you want to be.”

Broken memories. Lost faces. Treasured memories… all gone to that seductive allure of lyrium. Yet, through all that, he remembers Cullen as vividly as he remembers Maddox. However, there lay stark differences. Maddox was his friend who kept his head on his shoulders where Cullen was…

Cullen was a secret. Cullen was the one person who kept Samson feeling human. Cullen was the one who helped him keep faith in the Templars. And here he sits, rough fingers prodding at the crystal on Samson’s skin with hurt in his eyes.

Another sigh and Cullen stands, “Think about it. We can talk about this in the morning.”

Without another word, the Commander is gone, locking the cell and the prison doors behind him, leaving Samson in the dark, alone with the thoughts of what used to be with a heart so full.


End file.
